For Stevebody's attention

[stevebody]

Age thing: Sorry, inside joke. Brought on by one of the windbags in Decanter opining that he has grown fonder of Pinot as he's approached sixty. I somehow doubt that will happen to me.

I looked up the piece. Lovely writing but I'm too confused, at this point, to get much out of it. I know a lot of people respond that way to Pinot and, y'know, God Bless'em, but I've never had that reaction. I was reading in the WS Forums about Pinots, some guy describing what he liked about maybe six other grapes, widing up by saying that PINOT OFFERS ALL OF THAT!!!!!

Well...no, it doesn't. Not the richness and depth of the Cab in his description, not the grip of an Amarone, not the lively warmth of Italian or Spanish wines. The damned stuff is so hard to grow, vinify, make sense of, etc., from what I hear from vintners, that I can only surmise that so many people pledge their lives to making it because each one thinks he or she will be that one in 10,000 who captures the magic that stunned them in the first place.

I make no claims to having the world's best palate but I've been a chef for 30 years and I'm trained out the yazoo to distinguish flavors and the Beaux Freres tasting we had recently showed me that I'm not crazy. The wines were actually unpleasant to drink and a lot of the other people present said it, too. They all said that it isn't fair to judge now because they should be drunk in 10, 18, 25 years. Jeez, yet another wine I have to pamper and schlep.

My sincerest thanks for trying to educate me. I just seem not to have the gene. The piece on the Chambolle-Musigny was lyrical and poetic but I've heard that from dozens of people. I just haven't found the magic yet.